Sentencing/Post Conviction

Former Bryan Cave lawyer takes plea, admits voicemail death threat to partner

Federally charged in 2013 with transmitting a threat via interstate commerce, a former Bryan Cave lawyer pleaded guilty on Wednesday and admitted to leaving a death threat on a partner’s voicemail. Ryan Walsh, now 32, worked in the firm’s New York office for about six months before he was laid…

Feb 11, 2016 1:40 PM CST

Former federal judge who sentenced pot dealer to 55 years asks Obama to commute the sentence

A federal judge-turned-law professor who advocates for crime victims is asking President Obama to commute a marijuana dealer’s 55-year sentence. Paul Cassell, now a law professor at the University of Utah, had complained the mandatory sentence for Weldon Angelos was unfair when he imposed it, report NPR, the Salt Lake…

Feb 11, 2016 8:24 AM CST

Appeals court OKs 111 years for teen who killed 4, shot 25; lawyer calls him ‘completely harmless’

An Oregon man who fatally shot his parents and two high school classmates and wounded 25 others at the school cafeteria when he was 15 years old can’t further challenge his prison sentence of nearly 112 years, a state appeals court says. After the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miller…

Feb 10, 2016 3:20 PM CST

Former general counsel gets 18 months for stealing $2.6M from company account

A former in-house counsel for a New Jersey home health care company was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in federal prison for stealing over $2.6 million from his ex-employer and failing to report taxable income to the U.S. government. Matthew Neugeboren, 39, pleaded guilty in May to wire fraud and…

Feb 10, 2016 12:15 PM CST

Immigration lawyer gets 21 months for trying to help client disobey court order, flee US

A California immigration lawyer was sentenced Monday to 21 months in federal prison for trying to help a client who was a material witness in a “birth tourism” case leave the country. Prosecutors said Ken Zhiyi Liang, 39, accepted $6,000 from the Chinese woman to help her get out of…

Feb 9, 2016 1:50 PM CST

Former NC justice calls for outside review of state bar, says it’s divided into ‘two extreme camps’

A former justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court says the state bar is divided into “two extreme camps” and he believed an outside review is needed. Former Justice Bob Orr tells the Raleigh News & Observer that one camp in the state bar is more supportive of prosecutors and…

Feb 9, 2016 5:45 AM CST

Still on parole when admitted to practice, lawyer hopes to help others facing hefty prison terms

Back around the turn of the century, David Harris would have seemed an unlikely lawyer. He served a seven-year prison term for a series of armed robberies committed in 1997, and was still on parole when he was licensed to practice law in Tennessee in 2013. But the state does…

Feb 8, 2016 4:55 PM CST

Prisons bureau needs to change policy on monitoring inmate emails, ABA House urges

On Monday morning, the ABA House of Delegates adopted Resolution 10A (PDF), which urges the Federal Bureau of Prisons to amend its policy of monitoring emails between federal prisoners and their attorneys. Carol A. Sigmond of the New York County Lawyers’ Association, the resolution’s sponsor, told delegates that the legal…

Feb 8, 2016 2:27 PM CST

Lawyer’s own view of ‘train wreck’ performance doesn’t justify resentencing, top state court says

An Arkansas judge should not have granted a new sentencing hearing for a death-row inmate based on his lawyer’s concession that his performance in the trial’s last phase was “a train wreck,” the Arkansas Supreme Court has ruled. The court said the judge considering the ineffective assistance claim by convicted…

Feb 8, 2016 5:45 AM CST

Doctor gets 30 years to life in landmark prosecution over patient OD deaths

A former California physician was sentenced Friday to 30 years to life in a landmark Los Angeles drug prosecution. Dr. Hsiu-Ying “Lisa” Tseng, 46, gave up her license to practice medicine in 2012, after she was charged in three patient overdose deaths. Prosecutors say her second-degree murder case is the…

Feb 5, 2016 5:00 PM CST

Former law firm office manager gets 27 months for stealing $265K over 30 months

A former officer manager of a Kentucky law firm was sentenced this week to more than two years in prison for embezzling almost $265,000 from King, Deep & Branaman over a 30-month period. Krista Kaye Graupner, 45, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in October in federal court in Owensboro and…

Feb 5, 2016 10:25 AM CST

Driver gets 8 years in wrong-way crash that killed 1 law student and severely injured another

Both a victim’s mother and the defendant were tearful on Thursday as an Illinois judge imposed sentence in a drunken-driving crash that killed one University of Chicago law student on the verge of graduation and severely injured another. Erik Johnson, 25, apologized for the accident, which occurred in the wee…

Feb 4, 2016 5:00 PM CST

Prosecutor’s feigned sleep during defense closing didn’t create prejudicial error, court says

Maine’s top court has refused to overturn a murder conviction in a case where the prosecutor admitted he likely tried to annoy the defense lawyer by feigning sleep during his closing. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled (PDF) on Tuesday that there was no prejudicial error in the trial of…

Feb 4, 2016 7:47 AM CST

Inmate settles suit over ‘be sweet’ chair

A Tennessee inmate’s federal civil-rights suit over a restraint device once known as the “be sweet” chair has settled for $50,000. Inmate Lavonte Simmons said in his lawsuit that he was kept in the restraint chair at a Knoxville detention facility for nearly 48 hours, although he had two-hour breaks…

Feb 4, 2016 6:15 AM CST

2015 was a record year for exonerations, report says

Last year a record number of defendants were exonerated, according to a project that collects the data. Among the record 149 exonerations last year, 58 were in homicide cases, also a record high, according to a report (PDF) by the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of the University of…

Feb 3, 2016 8:33 AM CST